Deadline: 31-Oct-22
The Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) has launched a new targeted project, Trauma-informed practice and its impact on youth violence, to find out what difference trauma-informed practice has on keeping children safe from violence.
YEF is a charity with a mission that matters. They’re here to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence. They do this by finding out what works and building a movement to put this knowledge into practice.
Scope
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The overarching research question for this funding round is: How effective is the implementation of trauma-informed practice in preventing young people from becoming involved in violence?
- To help us answer the research question, they plan to identify and fund the most promising programmes of TIP delivered in the education, children’s social care or youth justice sectors and evaluate their impact on the below short and medium-term outcomes for staff and practitioners, as well as longer-term outcomes for young people.
- They acknowledge that TIP is likely to be implemented in the context of a wider system of support for young people and they see TIP as a contribution to broader efforts to reduce youth violence. In the evaluation they also want to find out about other strategies that are being used alongside TIP and the added value of its implementation.
What they’re aiming to invest in
As part of this project, they aim to find, fund and evaluate trauma-informed practice training or service redesign programmes or approaches in England and Wales. All of the projects they fund will be delivered in youth justice, education, and children’s social care services.
That means they’ll invest in:
- The delivery of up to three promising programmes of trauma-informed practice.
- They’re keen to fund programmes or approaches that deliver activities that focus on the following areas:
- Organisational learning: Staff training and development
- Organisational policies: Changes to policies and ways of working
- Organisational processes: Implementing trauma-focused referrals and planning
- Rigorous evaluations of the projects they fund.
Outcomes
They are interested in funding trauma-informed practice activity falling within the areas above so that they can evaluate its impact. Their ultimate interest is in whether the implementation of trauma-informed practice leads to a reduction in youth offending. To explore this, their evaluations will look at whether and how different trauma-informed approaches can lead to reductions in child-level offending outcomes – both violent and non-violent. This will ensure that the evidence they generate is relevant to YEF’s mission.
But because they want to prevent children and young people from becoming involved in violence in the first place, they also want to look at how impactful trauma-informed practice can be in affecting other outcomes that are related to offending behaviour later on; these are sometimes termed risk factors or protective factors. Their evaluations will therefore also look at the following child-level outcomes:
- Behavioural difficulties
- Bullying (as victim, perpetrator, or both)
- Drug and alcohol misuse
- Becoming a victim of crime
- Involvement with criminal peers
- Prosocial behaviour
- School engagement, attendance, exclusion and attainment
- Meaningful relationships
Eligibility Criteria
Children and young people they want to reach
They want to fund projects that ultimately aim to benefit children and young people who are in most need of trauma-informed practice. This means the TIP programmes should focus on benefiting children and young people that are likely to have been exposed to traumatic experiences and / or show behaviours that are associated with exposure to traumatic experiences and are associated with an increased risk of becoming involved in violence. At least one of the following should apply to the children and young people who could benefit:
- Have committed an offence or are at risk of committing an offence (violent or non-violent)
- Have been a victim of crime
- Are showing early signs of, or who have developed challenges with their behaviour
- Abuse or misuse substances, or have a substance misuse disorder
- Have experience of the care system
- Show poor school attendance and exclusion (fixed-term or permanent exclusions), or are at risk of exclusion
- Have been exposed to verbal, mental or physical abuse
- Have had experiences of racism
- Have been exposed to sexual or alcohol abuse
- Have experienced hostile parental separation, domestic violence, parental mental illness, neglect, or parental incarceration
- Have had other experiences of trauma
Age of the children and young people
- Programmes that work with professionals/organisations that predominantly reach 10 to 18-year-olds (at the start of the project) or 10-21-year-olds for looked after children (LAC) and children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).
Delivery organisations
Education settings, local authorities, or other relevant statutory bodies, charities, public services or private sector organisations. Programme must be delivered in:
- England and / or Wales and
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They are particularly interested in organisations delivering in:
- The youth justice or education or children’s social care services
- Capacity or potential (if provided with sufficient funding) to deliver to a sufficient number of professionals. This number will depend on how many children and young people one professional works with on average. Over the course of the project, trained professionals need to interact with at least 500 children and young people.
Type of evaluation
- They will prioritise projects that meet the conditions needed for a rigorous impact evaluation, such as a randomised controlled trial. This requires a fully developed programme (including fully developed delivery model, activities and materials) that has been delivered for at least six months in the UK.
- However, they will also consider projects that aren’t fully developed yet and require a pilot study prior to an impact evaluation. They would work with you on the development. This would be on the condition that both the pilot and the impact evaluations could feasibly be conducted within the specified delivery time (between August 2023 – March 2025).
- They are particularly interested in applications from organisations working in the above sectors. Organisations delivering in other sectors may still be eligible, but they would have to give this further consideration at the application stage and understand how they will make sure that the professionals / organisations they work with will in turn work with children and young people most at risk of violence.
For more information, visit Youth Endowment Fund.
For more information, visit https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/grants/trauma-informed-care-and-preventing-young-people-from-becoming-involved-in-violence/